


Of Tequila, Shitty Beer, and Comfort

by Elucreh



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:52:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elucreh/pseuds/Elucreh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which, Tony accepts that he and Pepper have broken up, heals a little, hates fighting magic workers, and hates fighting giant alien starfish even more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Tequila, Shitty Beer, and Comfort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarPanties](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=StarPanties).
  * Inspired by [Snugglesaurus](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/11285) by StarPanties. 



> So, Starpanties is the most wonderful and patient artist there has ever been. The only person whose patience even APPROACHES hers is my dear Gwennie, who undertook to beta this in two days and only then discovered I had switched tenses _halfway through_. Apologies to everybody, EVERYBODY, who has been waiting while I battled first-week-of-school, medical problems, and sheer brokeness to get this thing a) written, b) edited, and c) posted. YOU ARE STARS. P.S. These are MAGIC TOADS and ALIEN STARFISH, nothing written here is in any way intended to reflect even the most superficial of research. .

The thing of it is, Pepper has no tolerance for tequila. 

It is tequila's fault from start to finish, and that is what Tony will stick to, under oath, although it wouldn't be polite to say so in his vows, so he'll need a better story. 

If, um, they ever get to the vow-making point. 

Which. You know. He's Tony, so. 

Probably not. 

But, so, yeah. 

The break-up...the break-up was terrible. It hurt and it went on hurting for the forty-seven exactly times they thought maybe it didn't have to happen, or one of them did, or mostly Tony did, but sometimes it was Pepper, and each and every time was just as horrible as the first time, plus the added hammer-toe of thinking _this time._ It was the forty-eighth time that hurt a little, tiny, miniscule bit less, and that was because Tony had managed to have a non-Pepper sexy thought for the first time since the first break-up had begun to hurt. 

Unfortunately, Tony has little to no tolerance for shitty, shitty beer. 

It's the beer's fault, too. Not just the tequila. He supposes. 

But c'mon. He hasn't had terrible beer since college. He can't keep up his tolerance for _all_ alcohols. Even his liver has the occasional limit. 

Clint keeps awful beer around because it makes him feel young or reminds him of the good old days in the circus (or the...bad old days? They don't do heart-to-hearts, he and Clint), and when the forty-eighth time happens, it happens in the kitchen. 

After the thirty-fourth time Tony has learned not to touch Thor's mead during these conversations, so Clint's shitty beer it was. 

This led to the horrible, horrible conversation in which Tony admitted that he'd accidentally found Bruce sexy when he put the arm of his glasses in his mouth, and Pepper, in her turn--not inspired by the shitty beer, because Pepper can hold her hops, dammit, but apparently inspired by Tony's honesty--admitted in a burst of candor that she was maybe, possibly developing the tiniest little bit of a crush on Phil Coulson. 

"I _told_ you his name was Agent," Tony said bitterly, and possibly made a tiny little wounded noise like a hurt animal. Which led to Pepper crawling up into his lap, up on the counter. She held his head to her shoulder. Her fingers combed through his hair, absent and comforting. 

Two or three of Tony's teammates approached the kitchen doorway while he sat there, but all of them discreetly, considerately backed away again. Tony worked on being pathetically grateful and not getting too much emo on Pepper's sweater. 

He really only succeeded in the first one. Pepper swore she didn't mind. 

He had to believe her. 

He didn't mind her snot in his hair, so. Yeah. 

*~*~*~*~*

But anyway, the tequila. 

After the forty-eighth time, the time when they admitted it was real, and really not going to work out, and maybe just possibly they would survive it, Jane decided that what Pepper needed was a girls' night out. Jane had actually been a joy to keep around, a fellow insomniac obsessive genius with the ability to make Thor stop being...Thor...on Hangover Sundays. But Jane felt herself underqualified to throw a girls' night, and Natasha said drily that the last girls' night she had orchestrated ended in three kinds of poison and and a tie-dyed garter set. So Jane, in her infinite wisdom, borrowed Thor's Avengers expense card and flew Darcy Lewis out from New Mexico for her spring break. 

Darcy, Tony had been assured, would throw the best girls' night imagined by any Valkyrie. He was predisposed to like her. 

He liked her a little less in the end than he'd expected to, though, because Darcy made a killer margarita and also had an even kookier sense of humor when drunk. 

The morning after the girls' night out, Tony was catapulted from his bed by the call to assemble in Wichita, Kansas. He spent the first ten minutes of the trip out complaining bitterly to the Hulk about having to actually _go to Kansas_ when clearly he had been meant to Avenge important places. New York. Chicago. He would even allow Seattle, in a pinch, but _Wichita_? 

He'd forgotten that he was still miked to be heard in the Quinjet; he spent the next ten minutes listening to Steve tell him about how all people were important, and just because someone chose to live in Wichita didn't mean they deserved to have their homes and livelihoods destroyed by magic.

 _Magic_? Tony had forgotten it was going to be magic again, in the space of listening to Steve's brief homily and the ensuing argument over the importance of America's heartlands and the grain industry (rapidly devolving into an indictment of corn subsidies) between Clint, who had spent most of his childhood trying to keep himself and his entire sword-swallowing family fed by entertaining the likes of Wichitanians, and Natasha, who had never really gotten over missing Russian rye and was just hungover enough to fight about it. 

It didn't slow her down any, but damn she got short-tempered when she was dehydrated. (Tony heard Steve hand her a bottle of water, and smiled.) 

Bruce had decided he'd rather jump than fly, that morning. He and the Hulk had been engaged in a cautious, potential landmine of a negotiation lately, where Hulk got out a little more often and Bruce very, very occasionally woke up naked but near a place that would sell him underwear. Tony could have offered to find space for an underwear pocket in the suit, but frankly watching Bruce be naked and unashamed was one of the best perks of this job. 

(He was secretly working on something that would grow and shrink with the Hulk, but it was delicate work. And he was a little unmotivated. And Bruce didn't seem to mind nudity enough to really demand it, as long as it wasn't too cold out. 

Tony would have something by November. Really. He would. Deadlines were totally a thing Tony was capable of meeting. And there were bits of Bruce Tony really didn't want to get frostbite.)

So Tony was doing a little, a minute bit of fancy flying--the Quinjet wasn't perfect yet, it couldn't quite keep up, and Hulk was just a little slower than the jet, so Tony was going between the two. For a wonder skies were entirely clear between New York and Wichita ( _Wichita_ , seriously); they were on their way to a fight, the seven of them, and Pepper had come to wave them off. She'd been clutching a bathrobe and terribly hungover, but she also looked...better. Eased, somehow. She'd smiled at Tony easier this morning than she had in the last six months. 

Tony did another loop-de-loop and Hulk grinned up at him. 

Of course, the fight sucked. 

Tony _hated_ magic, and he hated toads, and god oh god oh god he _hated_ toad spit. And these toads had been enchanted to about a thousand times their natural size, including tongue length. 

There were only three of them, but still. _Ew_. 

Hulk didn't mind, though; in fact, Hulk was having a _blast_. He lumbered in to the courtyard of the Century II Arts Center (did Wichita really, _really_ need a _second_ Arts Center?) and pounced. He grabbed one toad's long, long tongue and slung it around his head like a Goliath slingshot. It flew over the wall with a croak. 

He was about to grab his second shotput when there was a high-pitched wail of distress and anger from behind the statue in the center of the court. A woman, thirty-ish, stepped out into the center of the square, and Hulk-- _Hulk_!--backed away from her, the look on her face was so menacing. 

"How _could_ you?" she demanded. "A helpless creature--" 

"The great amphibians are destroying--" Thor began, but she waved a hand at him and his jaw snapped shut, working furiously against the spell.

She glared up at Hulk. "Let's see how _you_ like it," she said, and began to mutter under her breath. Hulk—fell, almost, although really it was as if giant invisible hands had flung him to the earth. "Ha!" she said, and began to mumble again. Hulk writhed and began to—shrink? Yes, definitely shrink, and get less green, and he was going back to being Bruce again, but it was _hurting him_. Tony tried to dive in, to shoot her, to do something, but she waved the same impatient hand at him as she had at Thor, and he couldn't move. 

Finally Bruce lay on the ground, curled up in a fetal position. "You misused your strength," the witch declared. "'Ware losing control; there are worse things, and I have seen to it that you will learn of them." She ran to the nearest toad and climbed on top of its head. She clapped three times, and they all disappeared: the toads, the witch, the warts. 

Leaving behind a Bruce who couldn't Hulk out, because none of them knew what it might do. 

*~*~*~*~*

Tony decided to fly home on his own. It was boring, without Hulk, and Steve had absolutely flat-out refused to let Bruce jump it until they'd talked to one of the magic experts about all the possibilities. It was going to suck, fighting Hulk-less. 

Tony wasn't sulking, exactly, when he got home (okay, he totally was), but he felt like diving into his workshop and not coming out for a few hours. The new engines for the Quinjet were coming along pretty well, and he'd had a thought about Hulk's pants when he was corralling the giant toad. It would be easy to--

the elevator doors opened, and Tony's whole thought process ground to a halt. 

He burst out laughing. 

The lab was absolutely _festooned_ with Hulk merchandise. Hulk balloons were bouncing around the ceiling; green streamers had been draped over the work tables around stacks of trick-stance Hulk toys. Hulk posters and masks were hanging from the walls with a lopsided sort of artistry. Draped over the futon Pepper had made him install in one corner was Ms. Lewis, one giant hulk fist clenched around the neck of a tequila bottle, her feet in Incredibly Comfy Hulk slippers. 

Tony's wild cackles of delight seemed to disturb her; she stirred and muttered, bringing one hand up to block the light. Unfortunately, it was the hand wearing a Hulk fist. She sat bolt upright and looked at the end of her arm in bewilderment. Tony began to clap, softly but steadily.

"Ms. Lewis!" he said, and waited for her gaze to transfer from the big rubber arms to himself. "Do I have you to thank for the redecoration effort?" 

Darcy squinted at him, and then around the room for a few moments. "I..." she said, weakly. 

"Not that I mind, exactly," Tony added. "But if you could be persuaded to tell me _why_ you saw fit to cover my lab in the Hulk's face..."

"I think..." Darcy squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and bit her lip. "I think it was Pepper's idea? I...she wanted to show you it was okay to move on or something, and...I definitely remember a color of credit card I've never seen before and some kind of party notions warehouse. I--I think the party notions were my fault. Sorry. About that. " 

Tony found that he couldn't move. 

"She was really...determined," Darcy added. "I'm pretty sure I got into the slippers and passed out, but Pepper only got _more efficient_ the more she drank. Jane was helping her fill the balloons, I think. Natasha had the streamers. It seemed like a good idea at the time." 

"Pepper...told you?" Tony asked weakly, and Darcy nodded. Then she groaned and sank back against the futon cushions, clutching at her temples.

"Awwwww, shitfuck, god _dammit_ ," she muttered, and swallowed visibly. "Also I wasn't supposed to tell you she told us." 

Feeling idiotic, all Tony could manage was an, "Oh." 

Darcy sat up again, slower, more cautious. When she had achieved verticality, she smiled a crooked smile. "Not that we didn't all agree you'd make a truly adorable couple," she offered. 

Tony stared at her blankly. 

"Tequila," he said, and one hand came up to rub absently at the scar tissue around the arc reactor. "You gave Pepper tequila, didn't you." 

"I make a mean margarita," she confirmed. 

"I really just--I can't fathom why the woman can't switch liquors," Tony said. He kind of wanted to thump his head against the walls a couple of times. Admittedly, Natasha was an international super spy and Jane did highly classified government work and Pepper would own Asia if she weren't morally opposed to insider trading, but this had been a small, select circle of two broken-hearted people slowly coming to terms with the idea of living without each other, and now it was a larger group of people who had a really artistic sense of streamer-draping. 

The elevator doors opened behind him, and before Tony could even turn around, he heard Bruce's voice saying "They got hold of a few experts, but they're all a few hours ou--" he stopped, and now Tony didn't want to turn around, but he did. Because. Well. Because he couldn't very well do anything else, no matter how much he wanted to pretend that if he didn't look at a problem, it wouldn't exist. 

Darcy offered a weak, "Hi, Dr. Banner," from her corner of the lab, and Tony closed his eyes and tried not to wince. Dear god, she was _still here_ , and there really wasn't any way to get rid of her before Bruce asked the inevitable question. 

"Tony, what the hell?" and yeah. There it was, the inevitable question. 

Darcy closed her mouth with an audible click, which was possibly the only thing that saved her from being inflicted with a truly abysmal credit score before she'd even graduated from college. 

"The girls got a little drunk last night," Tony said evenly, trying not to let on just how much he didn't want Bruce to inquire into this. 

"They got a little drunk last night?" Bruce repeated, at a slightly higher pitch. 

Tony couldn't seem to meet his eyes. "Yeah, they uh--they thought it would be a good idea, cheer me up, you know, Pepper and all, she doesn't want me to be sad--" 

"--and she thought covering your lab with the Other Guy's face would make you happy?" 

"...tequila?" Tony offered weakly. 

"She thought covering your _lab_ \--"

"In all fairness I did laugh pretty hard," Tony said.

Bruce raised an eyebrow at him. "I can understand that," he said. "But...somehow I don't think they did it to make you laugh. It doesn't strike me as a very--a very Pepper solution. She's never really struck me as a practical joker, Tony. In fact I think I once heard her deliver a diatribe against pranks." 

"Did you?" Tony seized the opportunity for distraction. "When? I would pay money to have heard that."  
'  
"Tony, she was delivering it to _you_. It was the day before April Fools' Day. There were threats of waxing your arm hair in your _sleep_."

"Itched like crazy growing back in, too," Tony muttered. "The woman's crazy." 

"I'm not arguing," Bruce's voice was mild. "I'm just saying, crazy she might be, jolly prankster she is not." 

Darcy piped up, and Tony cursed her name. "It was my fault, Doctor Banner," she said. Tony wished she were on the moon.

"I--well, all right, you do seem sliiiiiightly more the type," Bruce admitted. 

"Pepper wanted to make a gesture, and I—well, tequila." 

"A—gesture?" 

Tony winced. Darcy slapped her hand to her forehead, and grunted out an "ow." 

"Sorry, Mr. Stark." 

"I don't like you as much as I expected to," Tony announced. 

There was an awkward pause. "That's understandable." A soft thud--probably the Hulk hand falling to floor. "I'm gonna--I'll go. And I'll hide the tequila really, really well, I swear." 

"That would be greatly appreciated," Tony said, with great dignity. She brushed past him, smelling almost equally strongly of alcohol and...rosemary? There was probably a story there. But Tony didn't have time to hear it. Bruce was looking at him, head cocked, eyes narrow. 

After a moment, Tony turned around and poked one of the holographic tables. It wasn't really very effective, because a small plastic Hulk in a tutu (for all your five-year-old-with-anger-issues birthday party needs) was right across the projection lens, but it gave him something to poke at and Tony really, really needed something to poke at. He started clearing the little Hulklings off of the table. 

 

"Yeah?" He picked up the Hulk in Mickey Mouse ears and held it to the light. 

"What did she mean, Tony? About a gesture? Is there--what did she mean?" 

"Well--" Tony hesitated, but. But there didn't seem to be a way out. Exactly. It was. There had to be an answer to the question, and Tony was damned if he could think of a lie that would make any sense whatsoever. 

"Pepper and I--this last time was. I think it was the _last time_ , if that makes any sense?" 

Bruce rumbled a little note of sympathy, and Tony smiled. He put the little Disney Hulk on a corner of the table, out of the projection line of sight, and picked up a Hulk in heart-covered boxer shorts. "Pepper just...wanted me to know she was glad I was moving on, I think." 

"All right," Bruce said slowly. "But why--"

He broke off, and Tony braced himself. 

"...me? Tony--"

and Tony had to spin around, because that wasn't Bruce's normal voice or even his pitying voice (sometimes Bruce used the pitying voice on journal articles he was reading aloud to Tony while Tony fiddled with engines; the pitying voice was comforting, familiar and part of Tony's grounding ritual; it would have been worth the cost of the journal subscriptions just for how safe Tony felt when he heard Bruce murmur, "Oh, dear" before specifying exactly which conclusions had been "suggested" by the evidence.) 

That was a pre-Hulk voice, that was Bruce when he was scared or angry and only more scared or more angry because Hulk wanted to come out to play, wanted to be scared or angry for Bruce or instead of Bruce, and sure enough when Tony had spun all the way around Bruce's skin was streaking green. He was back-peddling toward the elevator, fumbling for the button. 

"Bruce--" Tony started, groping for the words, for a way to reassure him, but Bruce shook his head at him, fast and decisive, and all Tony could do was watch, helpless, as Bruce slammed his thumb against the Close Door button and disappeared from view. 

*~*~*~*~*

So that had gone well. Tony spent half an hour trying to talk himself into doing something, anything; chasing after Bruce or writing him an e-mail or moving to Tibet (except Bruce was far more likely that Tony was to move to Tibet, running was Bruce's M.O., wasn't it, and what would Tony do if Bruce was in Tibet) or just shooting Darcy Lewis and presenting Bruce with the corpse as an "I'm sorry" gift. He was fiddling with the Quinjet specs as he considered the options, but Jarvis interrupted both the fiddling and the train of thought with a gentle suggestion that the non-flying Avengers might prefer it if they didn't combust mid-flight. 

"Wimps," Tony snorted, but he gave up and went to summon the elevator anyway. 

The elevator let out on the residential floor, into the wide space with the communal kitchen and entertainment area. (Most of the suites had their own kitchen and living space, of course, but Bruce and Coulson were the only ones who would cook--even though Natasha claimed she knew how, she just didn't want to feed Steve and Thor--and movies were more fun with Clint trying to throw popcorn in your hair during the boring bits.) Steve and Natasha were sitting at the round glass-topped table, Natasha cleaning her knives and Steve eating an apple rather vengefully. Both of them looked up warily when Tony came in. 

"Stark," Natasha greeted him, holding a knife up to the light. 

Steve was holding his apple core like he had a mind to throw it. "Bruce came through a little while ago," he said, and didn't bother trying not to sound reproachful. "You know you can't upset him until we know exactly what this curse is going to do, Tony, for god's sake." 

"I--of course I know that!" Tony said indignantly. "What do you take me for? It wasn't _me_ who upset him." 

"Who was it, then?" Natasha was wearing her resigned-boredom expression. 

"Darcy," Tony said, aware that it sounded weak. Bruce hardly even knew Darcy. 

Steve raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Did she step on his toes?" 

Tony scowled at him. "I don't want to talk about it," he declared, and went to fling himself on the couch. He could feel Steve and Natasha having a conversation with their eyebrows behind him. "Oh, shut up." 

"We didn't say anything, Stark," Natasha pointed out. 

"All right, fine, I'll talk to him, jeez. Where did he go?" 

Steve cleared his throat. "We're not sure. He made a cup of tea--his hands were shaking and a little green, by the way--and took it back to the elevator. He didn't say where--" 

"It was a paper cup, though." Natasha picked up another knife and began to polish it with a cloth. 

Tony frowned at her. "A paper..." Oh, shit. Oh, _shit_. He threw himself at the elevator and jabbed at the button with his index finger. He thumbed the button for Bruce's floor, pushing it over and over just for something to do, even though it was a Stark elevator, god damn it, and it knew where it was going. When he got there, the apartment was a mess, the kind of mess the Hulk tended to leave behind him when he was in a rush. The door had left a new dent in the wall--Tony owed his handyman a small fortune, even by his own standards--and there were papers strewn along the counter. Tony ran to the bedroom, but half the hangers were empty in the closet. Shit. 

Just. _Shit_. 

Bruce had _run_. 

Tony stared at the empty closet for a moment in silence. He was in no way trying not to cry. 

He headed for the elevator again, his feet feeling like they were made of lead. If he was nauseated, it was just reaction to smelling Darcy as she scuttled past him, out of the lab. Sure. 

When the elevator let him off at his own floor of the building, Tony headed straight for the bedroom. He didn't want to see anybody or talk to anybody, possibly ever again. Bruce had run, and unless he really lost control, he would be near-impossible to find. Bruce had learned the art of disappearing through long experience avoiding the military, and _then_ he'd spent eighteen months working with Natasha Romanoff. If he wanted to be unfindable, he would be unfindable. It was as simple as that, and Tony had driven him off. 

He kicked off his boots at the door to the bedroom, and went to flop on the bed, where a trickle of something cold and wet was waiting for him. 

Uh. Ew. He lifted his head slightly, and realised that Darcy and Pepper must have gotten to his room, too. There was a pillow lying across his bed, a pillow printed with the Hulk's image, wrapped in purple shorts. He smiled faintly--when he got the pants problem worked out, they would definitely have to be purple. Just because. 

Unless he could convince Bruce to wear a tutu...he groaned, and let his head drop back against the Hulk's stomach. He couldn't convince Bruce of anything unless Bruce came back, and. Well. 

Bruce might not _come_ back. At all. Ever. Bruce didn't like confrontation, and Bruce had left. 

"I seriously didn't mean to scare him," Tony muttered aloud; Jarvis was respectfully silent. Jarvis had never really mastered the fine art of listening sympathetically; he wass too much Tony's brainchild for that. Sarcasm, yes. Sympathy, no. 

Tony sighed and thumped his head against the Hulk's belly again. "I know I'm no prize," he announced to the empty room, to Jarvis and to nobody. "But I swear to God I wouldn't have made a move on him. Fucking Darcy. Fucking _tequila_. He never would have had to know." 

*~*~*~*~*

Days went by, and Bruce didn't come back. Tony perfected the Quinjet upgrades, attended one meeting of the board, poked his nose into three Stark labs to make the baby scientists sweat, had a fight with Steve over the last of Sitwell's peanut butter cookies, and manipulated everyone else in the room so that Coulson had to sit next to Pepper on movie night. Pirates of the Caribbean--the original, the good one--and Tony caught them mouthing along to all Elizabeth's best lines in unison. It was cute, really. 

It only made him want to impale his own liver a little. 

And Bruce didn't come back. Tony could feel the absence dragging at him, weighing down his creativity. He'd started out spending _all_ his time in the labs, surrounded by the hilarious little Hulk figurines, poking at engines and chemical formulas, but he found the creeping edge of lethargy around too many of the blind walls any scientific process involves. He tried moping around the communal living areas, but nobody was very sympathetic, or believed him even a little when he protested that Bruce's absence was _not actually his fault_. 

Instead he retreated to his own bedroom, where at least people didn't look at him reproachfully when he sighed. He tried talking to Jarvis, formulated and discarded more than a dozen apology e-mails to Bruce (even though he seriously doubted Bruce would be checking his e-mail)...but these efforts, too, waned as the days went by. He would go down and poke around the Stark labs a little, or work in the shop for an hour or two, then drift back up to bed and wrap himself around the stupid, silly pillow. Somehow that made him feel a little better in ways the empty-eyed masks down in the shop didn't. 

All the same, the adrenaline surge when alien starfish invaded Manhattan was a welcome, welcome relief. 

*~*~*~*~*

So it turned out, alien starfish? Strong suckers. 

Tony was the only one who laughed, which meant Clint grumbled the whole way through the battle. The starfish were attaching themselves to buildings and cracking their way through the glass to reach for people to eat. 

To _eat_. And the things were at least ten yards across. 

(And the people of Manhattan were still crowding to the windows to watch the action. Tony was going to fund a new series of public safety awareness campaigns, and this time he was going to write the cautions _himself_. Stairwells! Stairwells without windows when gigantic alien things were trying to get in through the windows to kill you!) 

"We really could have used Bru--" Natasha began, scaling her way up a window washers' line before she tried to stab a starfish in the underside of a sucker and it flung her out into the air. Tony flung out an arm for her to grab and threw her to a nearby fire escape. 

"I swear to god, Natasha, it is _not my fault_ that Bruce--" Tony swerved to fire a repulsor at a starfish arm that was groping around inside a tall glass series of lawyer offices. "—that Bruce left." 

"I'm not saying it was," she replied, not even bothering to try to sound sincere. "I'm just saying we could use something with some pulling power. These things are _stuck_ to the glass." 

"Had a little luck prying them off with the shield," Steve said, over the radio. "Problem is I've got one shield and they've got five arms. Hawkeye?" 

"They're a little more vulnerable to sharp edges on the sides of their arms as well as the undersides, Widow." Clint fired one of his Tony specials with a barbed edge, and one of the starfish down the street screamed with definitely alien overtones. 

Thor had been prying at an alient attached to a rooftop greenhouse with Mjolnir, but he paused a moment. "It seems to me," he announced, "that it is possible these fine opponents may be vulnerable to the white-hot wrath of Mjolnir." 

They all took a moment to parse that, and then Steve shouted, a pain-shout, and Tony thought _fuck it_. "Yeah, Thor, do it, do it _now_ ," he said, and fired a repulsor at the starfish arm that was wrapped around Captain America's waist. Thor called the lightning and sent it toward the aliens. Thunder boomed in the wake of the bright light. Then, abruptly, there was silence. 

And then there was the thud of fifteen or so huge, electrified shellfish crashing to the street below. 

Tony eyed the damage warily. "That's gonna be a bitch for somebody to clean up," he said, and Coulson sighed in his ear. 

"That is why you are still affiliated with SHIELD, Mr. Stark. We don't make you clean up your own messes." 

"Oh, hey," Tony said, brightening. "Speaking of, I am totally making Darcy clean up the lab before she gets on a plane tomorrow." 

*~*~*~*~*

Darcy didn't even protest much, which made Tony suspect she was feeling all the blame that rightly belonged to her. (And possibly even a little extra. It wasn't _all_ her fault. He knew that. Really.) 

He couldn't be in the lab while she was cleaning it, though, so he retreated to the bedroom, with its single item of Hulk swag, easily tossed into the jet with Darcy in the morning. He stood next to the bed for a minute, looking down at the pillow. It was tempting, so tempting, to just...keep it. But. 

There were _levels_ of creepy. If Bruce had run—there were lines not even Tony felt comfortable crossing. 

"Could've used the Hulk today," he said aloud. "Could've—not that we didn't handle it, or Thor did, but...I miss knowing ol' Green had my back. Miss dissecting stuff with Bruce after. Miss Bruce's adorable little ass after he changes back." 

Jarvis doesn't say anything. Tony kicks off his shoes and curls up around the pillow, moving gingerly around the bruise over his left kidney. 

He woke up to Pepper's knock and smile; it hardly hurt at all. 

"Darcy wanted to say goodbye," she said. "I thought you'd want to keep the Hulk in tutu, etc. so I had her box them up. But the streamers are gone." 

Tony gave her a sheepish look. "You and I probably should've helped her a little." 

"She came here instead of volunteering for Habitat for Humanity," Pepper said, clearly unbothered. "She might as well deflate a few balloons. She has some killer references for her resume; let her work for them." 

"Good plan," Tony said, and instead of kissing her adorable earlobe he spun around to grab the pillow. "We'll give her this as a good-bye gift." 

Pepper took the pillow, but she looked at it with bewilderment. "Where did this come from?" 

Tony snorted. "I'm told you only get more efficient the more you have to drink; don't you remember this?" 

Pepper frowned at him. "Tony, I have final approval on all the Avengers merchandise. We've never authorised a Hulk pillow." 

Tony froze. Then he snatched the pillow away from her and bolted for the elevators. 

*~*~*~*~*

Four experts in the field of magic, one incredibly uncomfortable debriefing, and a really awkward cab ride later, there was a conversation. 

"I don't--I can't be your rebound, Tony. I just...I can't." 

"I know, I know, I--wait. You can't go out with me, or you can't be my rebound?" 

"..."

"..."

"... ... ..." 

"Yeah. Yeah, okay. I just--I feel better when you're near. Even when you're. You know. Full of cotton. You help. I'm...healing. I--maybe when I'm all better?" 

"..." 

"Yeah. Yeah, okay."

**Author's Note:**

> Please, PLEASE go look at and love the art, to which this fic is the humblest of tributes. It will be my screensaver for a long, LONG time.


End file.
